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IET Communications

Physical layer security by robust masked beamforming and protected zone optimisation

Nabil Romero‐Zurita, Des McLernon, Mounir Ghogho

Published May 1, 2014• 22 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The authors address the physical layer security in multiple‐input‐single‐output communication systems. This study introduces a robust strategy to cope with the channel state information errors in the main link to convey confidential information towards a legitimate receiver while artificial noise is broadcast to confuse an unknown eavesdropper. The authors study how an eavesdropper physically located in the vicinity of the transmitter can put at risk the network's security, and hence, as a countermeasure, a ‘protected zone’ was deployed to prevent the close‐quarters eavesdropping attacks. The authors determine the size of the protected zone and transmission covariance matrices of the steering information and the artificial noise to maximise the worst‐case secrecy rate in a resource‐constrained system and to minimise the use of resources to ensure an average secrecy rate. The proposed robust masked beamforming scheme offers a secure performance even with erroneous estimates of the main channel showing that a protected zone not only enhances the transmission security but it allows us to make an efficient use of energy by prioritising the available resources.

DOI
10.1049/iet-com.2013.0377

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Physical layer security approaches enable secure message transmission without upper layer data encryption and thus draw intensive attention recently years. Following this topic, this paper proposes a novel approach to improve the security of multiple-input single-output (MISO) communications links in the presence of non-colluding passive Poisson distributed eavesdroppers. In the proposed approach, it is assumed that the channel state information (CSI) of the main channel is known and that of the eavesdropper channel is unknown. Through beamforming vectors, the transmitter transmits information signal to the legitimate receiver along with artificial noise (AN) to confuse the eavesdroppers. Secrecy outage probability (SOP) is adopted to describe the secrecy performance, and based on it, security region (SR) is used from the perspective of space to illustrate the security. In obtaining the SOP of the described transmission link, stochastic geometry theory is adopted. It is shown that the stochastic geometry theory provides a powerful tool in obtaining a solution of SOP. Furthermore, the secrecy performance between transmitting approaches with AN and without AN is compared. The SR is plotted and the factors impacting security are analyzed accordingly.

Globecom•Dec 1, 2014•2 citations
The authors address the physical layer security in multiple‐input‐single‐output communication systems. This study introduces a robust strategy to cope with the channel state information errors in the main link to convey confidential information towards a legitimate receiver while artificial noise is broadcast to confuse an unknown eavesdropper. The authors study how an eavesdropper physically located in the vicinity of the transmitter can put at risk the network's security, and hence, as a countermeasure, a ‘protected zone’ was deployed to prevent the close‐quarters eavesdropping attacks. The authors determine the size of the protected zone and transmission covariance matrices of the steering information and the artificial noise to maximise the worst‐case secrecy rate in a resource‐constrained system and to minimise the use of resources to ensure an average secrecy rate. The proposed robust masked beamforming scheme offers a secure performance even with erroneous estimates of the main channel showing that a protected zone not only enhances the transmission security but it allows us to make an efficient use of energy by prioritising the available resources.
We address physical layer security in multiple- input-multiple-output (MISO) communications in the presence of an unknown passive eavesdropper. Beamforming and artificial noise broadcasting are chosen to increase communications security. We first study the effect of a close eavesdropper on security and then we define a “Protected Zone” in the transmitter's vicinity. We present an optimisation strategy that intelligently sets the transmission power and the size of the protected zone to probabilistically achieve secrecy at a specified target secrecy rate. The results show that this strategy can achieve a high probability of secrecy by efficiently prioritising the use of the available resources.
Wireless communications offer data transmission services anywhere and anytime, but with the inevitable cost of introducing major security vulnerabilities. Indeed, an eavesdropper can overhear a message conveyed over the open insecure wireless media putting at risk the confidentiality of the wireless users. Currently, the way to partially prevent eavesdropping attacks is by ciphering the information between the authorised parties through complex cryptographic algorithms. Cryptography operates in the upper layers of the communication model, bit it does not address the security problem where the attack is suffered: at the transmission level. In this context, physical layer security has emerged as a promising framework to prevent eavesdropping attacks at the transmission level. Physical layer security is based on information-theoretic concepts and exploits the randomness and the uniqueness of the wireless channel. In this context, this thesis presents signal processing techniques to secure wireless networks at the physical layer by optimising the use of multiple-antennas. A masked transmission strategy is used to steer the confidential information towards the intended receiver, and, at the same time, broadcast an interfering signal to confuse unknown eavesdroppers. This thesis considers practical issues in multiple-antenna networks such as limited transmission resources and the lack of accurate information between the authorised transmission parties. The worst-case for the security, that occurs when a powerful eavesdropper takes advantage of any opportunity to put at risk the transmission confidentiality, is addressed. The techniques introduced improve the security by offering efficient and innovative transmission solutions to lock the communication at the physical layer. Notably, these transmission mechanisms strike a balance between confidentiality and quality to satisfy the practical requirements of modern wireless networks.
The use of multiple‐antenna arrays has attracted much attention for the physical layer security of wireless systems, where the so‐called artificial‐noise solution can be applied to enhance the communication confidentiality. In the first part of this study, the authors consider secure communication over a multiple‐input single‐output Rayleigh‐fading channel in the presence of a multiple‐antenna eavesdropper – referred to as a multiple‐input single‐output multiple‐eavesdropper (MISOME) wiretap channel. Specifically, secure beamforming with artificial noise is treated when the transmitter has access to full channel state information (CSI) of a legitimate channel but only partial CSI of an eavesdropper channel. First, the optimal power allocation between the information‐bearing signal and artificial noise (or simulated interference) is derived to maximise the achievable secrecy rate in the presence of a weak or strong eavesdropper. Then, the first‐order optimal power allocation strategy is developed in a switched fashion by selecting the best of weak‐ and strong‐eavesdropper solutions for a general eavesdropping attack, and a closed‐form expression is derived for the ergodic secrecy rate achieved by secure beamforming with this switched power allocation in the MISOME wiretap channel. The numerical results show that the switched power allocation is a simple but effective approach that nearly achieves the optimal secrecy rate.
We address physical layer security in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communications. We introduce a worst-case robust transmission strategy to broadcast artificial noise jointly from the transmitter and/or the receiver under a mismatched version of the channel state information (CSI) between all the communication parties. We determine the transmission covariance matrices that maximise the worst-case secrecy rate in a global power constrained system considering two cases regarding the knowledge about the eavesdropping channel: i) partial instantaneous, and ii) second-order statistics. The resulting problems turn out to be nonconvex and so we approximate them to tractable semidefinite programs (SDP). The proposed technique introduces flexibility to generate the artificial noise from either authorised source depending on the particular transmission conditions enhancing the security performance.
Physical layer security approaches enable secure message transmission without upper layer data encryption and thus draw intensive attention recently years. Following this topic, this paper proposes a novel approach to improve the security of multiple-input single-output (MISO) communications links in the presence of non-colluding passive Poisson distributed eavesdroppers. In the proposed approach, it is assumed that the channel state information (CSI) of the main channel is known and that of the eavesdropper channel is unknown. Through beamforming vectors, the transmitter transmits information signal to the legitimate receiver along with artificial noise (AN) to confuse the eavesdroppers. Secrecy outage probability (SOP) is adopted to describe the secrecy performance, and based on it, security region (SR) is used from the perspective of space to illustrate the security. In obtaining the SOP of the described transmission link, stochastic geometry theory is adopted. It is shown that the stochastic geometry theory provides a powerful tool in obtaining a solution of SOP. Furthermore, the secrecy performance between transmitting approaches with AN and without AN is compared. The SR is plotted and the factors impacting security are analyzed accordingly.
Physical layer security approaches enable secure message transmission without upper layer data encryption and thus draw intensive attention recently years. Following this topic, this paper proposes a novel approach to improve the security of multiple-input single-output (MISO) communications links in the presence of non-colluding passive Poisson distributed eavesdroppers. In the proposed approach, it is assumed that the channel state information (CSI) of the main channel is known and that of the eavesdropper channel is unknown. Through beamforming vectors, the transmitter transmits information signal to the legitimate receiver along with artificial noise (AN) to confuse the eavesdroppers. Secrecy outage probability (SOP) is adopted to describe the secrecy performance, and based on it, security region (SR) is used from the perspective of space to illustrate the security. In obtaining the SOP of the described transmission link, stochastic geometry theory is adopted. It is shown that the stochastic geometry theory provides a powerful tool in obtaining a solution of SOP. Furthermore, the secrecy performance between transmitting approaches with AN and without AN is compared. The SR is plotted and the factors impacting security are analyzed accordingly.